U.S. West Inc., the Denver-based parent company of Pacific Northwest Bell, Northwestern Bell, and Mountain Bell, has established an education foundation to promote a seminar on career and academic choices for high-school students nationwide.
The U.S. West Education Foundation, based in Seattle, will sell to major corporations around the nation training materials and licenses to distribute a two-hour curriculum program for 9th and 10th graders in local high schools.
The seminar, called “Choices,” is designed to be presented in classes for one hour on two consecutive days.
It deals with motivation for learning, time management, and career consequences of the courses students select in school, according to Gary A. Frizzell, director of the foun-dation and author of the curriculum program.
The foundation will initially try to sell the materials to other telephone companies that were created by the divestiture of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company. These companies “have the nation carved up geographically” and have “a history of support for schools and community involvement,” Mr. Frizzell said.
The license fees collected by the foundation from these firms and others will underwrite the costs of producing the program and the expenses of operating the foundation, Mr. Frizzell said.
He said the “Choices” seminar has been tested in more than 2,100 classrooms in Oregon and Washington after being introduced there during the last school year by Pacific Northwest Bell.--sr